In a reversal of her reputation in the United States, Harriet Beecher Stowe was considered the ideal feminist in nineteenth-century Argentina, while her views on race were downplayed. Both pro-feminist and anti-feminist Argentines emphasized the image of Stowe as the virtuous civic mother, whose writing was not designed to enhance her own fame but rather to defend the good mother's duty to raise enlightened citizens. This selective image of Stowe became part of the debates about the role of women in the new nation of Argentina. This article documents how Stowe was discussed in newspaper essays on the role of women, provides a historical context for the discussions, and contrasts the role of motherhood in the feminisms of the United States and Argentina.
the prestigious Buenos Aires newspaper La Naci6n. Its sumptuous style reflects'l:he ideal of the harmonious, self-consciously artistic prose inherent in Modernism, the dominant literary mode in contemporary Buenos Aires. Los gauchos judfos offers, in its way, a participant'S account of life in the colonies, where the author had spent his childhood: arriving from Proskuroff, Russia, Gerchunoff's family had first been assigned to Moisesville, later moving to Rajil in Entre Rios province. Yet, two factors distance this retelling from the documentary realism one might associate with an involved witness to history. First, the lyricized version of life in the agricultural settlement is in startling contrast to the harshness of the actual events. The elegant prose portrays life on the pampas as the realization of a rapturous dream and as the way Jews could best become part of the Argentine nation's existence and the creators of Zion. The novel accords a complex poetic treatment to social realities not inherently amenable to such
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